Ed Bott has weighed in on the situation as well, and like me, he calls out Microsoft for publicly masking the reasons for discontinuing Drive Extender. (Which is odd, because Microsoft told me, point blank, the real reasons over a month ago and made no attempts to cover it up.)

But Ed also offers some advice about fixing Home Server:

First, optimize the basic Windows Home Server product as a single-drive product, with 1 to 3TB of storage intended for backups and light file sharing in a home setting.

Next, bring back the first-generation Drive Extender code and whip it into shape as an optional add-on for enthusiasts who want to build multi-disk boxes. Make it available only for Vail and block its installation on the small-business servers.

Give every Home Server installation a dedicated 50 or 100 GB of SkyDrive storage and use it as a free cloud-based backup service to help overcome the loss of data duplication in Drive Extender.

I asked Microsoft in October why it simply didn't make Drive Extender a Vail-only option. But I think it's a matter of resources. It only made sense to spend a lot of time and money on something like that if it was going to be broadly deployed. And what happens if/when this technology causes some customer data loss? Could Microsoft seriously tell them it was their fault because, after all, they're the ones that demanded it be put back?

So assuming DE isn't coming back--because it isn't--we still need a solution that mirrors the central function of Drive Extender: Local, cross-disk data redundancy. And the only thing I've seen that comes close is Drobo's product line. These products would work well with Vail, of course. Imagine a Drobo device (or series of products) based on WHS. That would make us all forget HP pretty quickly, especially if it was priced right.

Discuss this Article 7

I found it interesting that the Drobo on sale at Amazon had about 1/3 of the reviewers giving it only 1 or 2 stars. Not very good! Drobro does not appear to be the answer unless they can increase reliability.
BTW I can see why HP dropped MediaSmart Home Servers. While a great product they were a special, non-stardard build, and (I suspect) that drove up the cost. Also, I only ever saw one of these on any store shelf the whole time they were available. Hard to sell something people can't see. Also for the average consumer the price was too expensive.

No Mike, I never experience any issues and I run IPPBX software (3CX) on my WHS as well.
I suspect this news will result in 4 bay skus being being configured with two raid 1 bay pairs. The first bay pair filed with 1TB drives. The second bay pair for folks with large media libraries.

The Drobo is not without its own issues, although I like the product and have used one for years. In particular I have experienced: (i) issues with playing back HD video stored on a Drobo connected to my SBS box to a media center extender connected to a separate Media Center PC (which led me to move such video to an external drive attached directly to the Media Center PC); and (ii) Drobo firmware updates have a tendency to wipe out all the network share information that is set up and usually require powering down the Drobo (as the Drobo always indicated that some file has been left open and must be closed prior to the firmware update).

I have a bunch of Drobos, both at work and at home, and I think they provide an equivalent service to that offered by Drive Extender in WHS. However, my experience with Drobo hasn't been that positive. Of the four Drobo's I've used, one went south. One lost all data on all of the drives. Others have routinely gone offline for one reason or another that was never clear. Often they refuse to update--the desktop tray dohickey notices that there's an update for the firmware on the drive, offers to install it, and ... fails. Again and again with no resolution. This is COMMON.

On top of that the Drobo's are S-L-O-W. I think that means they are great as a backup solution, but just not workable for certain applications. This probably isn't an issue for WHS use though. If you use a larger virtual partition size (like 8TB say, and yes Drobo requires you to choose) the system can take bloody forever to boot up though.

And I'm not sure that a WHS running on a Mac Mini type device with a Drobo attached via eSata say is a remotely reasonable device given the costs and complexities involved in maintaining such a thing. You might be better off just giving up on WHS entirely and just using a Drobo-FS...

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